Conservative activist Ginni Thomas, who's married to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, sent a number of texts to then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows between November 2020 and January 2021.

Transcript

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

The wife of a Supreme Court justice reportedly urged former President Trump's top aide to help overturn the results of the 2020 election. CBS News and The Washington Post report that toward the end of the Trump administration, Ginni Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, exchanged text messages over several weeks with Mark Meadows, who was White House chief of staff at the time. The messages were obtained by the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Robert Costa is the chief election and campaign correspondent for CBS News and one of the reporters who broke this story, and he joins us now.

Robert, thanks for being here.

ROBERT COSTA: Good morning.

MARTIN: Can you start off by walking us through a timeline for these text messages? When were they sent? How many were there?

COSTA: Days after the 2020 presidential election, when then-President Trump was already eyeing a potential hearing at the U.S. Supreme Court, Ginni Thomas, the wife of longtime Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, reached out to then-chief of staff at the White House, Mark Meadows. It was a beginning of a 29-text-message exchange between November 2020 and January 2021.

MARTIN: And what do they illustrate? I mean, what stood out to you most?

COSTA: It's extraordinary. This is a pipeline between the spouse of a Supreme Court justice, the judicial branch and the chief of staff at the White House, one of the top executives and officials in the executive branch. And they're communicating at times about the legislative branch, Congress. It's this overlapping of relationships across the United States government. And they all have seemingly one mission - to overturn the 2020 election to stop Joe Biden from taking the White House. And at times they are communicating about legal strategy. Ginni Thomas - though she's been a longtime conservative activist, she is the spouse of a justice. She's advising Meadows to take on Sidney Powell, a controversial lawyer, make her the lead and the face of the legal strategy.

MARTIN: At one point, she texts to Meadows, do not concede. I mean, in these messages, does she ever directly reference her husband, Justice Thomas?

COSTA: It's important to note that the Supreme Court and Justice Thomas never explicitly come up or are never referenced in a way that is clear. And we've reached out to Justice Thomas and Ginni Thomas repeatedly for some kind of clarification. They have so far not responded. But what we do see is a reference in the text messages from Ginni Thomas to a best friend. She does not say whom she's referring to in that. Public documents and speeches show that Ginni Thomas and Clarence, the Supreme Court justice, have both referred to each other as best friend in the past. But again, we do not know who exactly she's referring to. She also mentions his 1991 confirmation hearings at one point.

MARTIN: How does Mark Meadows respond to these texts?

COSTA: Mark Meadows is often kind of nodding his head, as we all tend to do on some text message exchanges, listening to her, taking her seriously. But there are times he seems to seriously embrace her message. At one point, he invokes his faith, talks about God, the, quote, "king of kings" and how this is not just an election fight. He frames it as a fight of good versus evil.

MARTIN: Can you outline the possible conflicts of interest here, when we've got on the one hand Ginni Thomas, this conservative activist, now seemingly attempting to encourage throwing out the election results of 2020? She is married to a sitting Supreme Court justice who could oversee decisions concerning the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

COSTA: It's a complicated question with a complicated answer. And this story perhaps might just be beginning. We do know that Justice Thomas has ruled on the record so far of the Trump administration and whether they should go over to the House January 6 Select Committee. He was a dissenting voice in that decision. But we do not know yet, was there any awareness about Ginni Thomas' message to Mark Meadows? Were they part of that trove at the time? Was there any awareness that her messages were part of the documents going over to the committee, a decision he was ruling on? So in brief, was he ruling on something that his wife was involved in?

And the bigger picture is he ruled on several Trump-related cases. He was part of decisions about throwing out some of the election cases. But he said in his own writing, those cases should be heard. Supreme Court justices, though, don't have much oversight other than Congress. They can be impeached, but there's no sort of oversight board or rule book for Supreme Court justices. So a lot of this is going to come down to what Congress decides to do, if anything.

MARTIN: Robert Costa of CBS News, thank you. We appreciate you sharing your reporting with us.

COSTA: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.